Tuesday, July 2, 2013

PFLAG National celebrated the announcement of Profiles in Diversity Journal’s 2013 Innovation Award honorees, in which Sodexo’s LGBTA Conversation Guide was named one of the top 10 innovations for the year.The project – a collaborative effort by Sodexo, PFLAG National, and Buck Davis & Company – offers managers throughout the organization a web-based learning tool to increase cultural competency around LGBT issues, offer guidance in navigating critical workplace conversations, and an opportunity to identify themselves as an Open Leader in the organization, ready to discuss the topic with colleagues.“Sodexo is on the cutting-edge of diversity and inclusion work,” said Jody M. Huckaby, Executive Director of PFLAG National. “From their perfect score on the Corporate Equality Index, to their engagement of straight allies which earned them PFLAG National’s Straight for Equality in the Workplace Award in 2010, they have accomplished so much in the LGBT space. The LGBT Conversation Guide is another way to deepen this work; PFLAG National is proud to have been a lead collaborator.”PFLAG National, through its Equality & Diversity Partnerships team, brought key expertise to the effort, leveraging the personal stories of Sodexo employees as the starting point to illustrate critical learning elements, including understanding terminology and culture, learning how to have culture-changing conversations, getting clarity on policies and laws, and “coming out” as an Open Leader.“This multimedia resource offered PFLAG the opportunity to go beyond providing training to working with Sodexo to create a broadly accessible, interactive, and engaging way to work towards ensuring that inclusion of LGBT employees and their allies happens at every level of the organization. This is what innovation in inclusion is all about,” said Huckaby.Click here to learn more about the award on the Profiles in Diversity Journal website. You can also get more information about PFLAG’s LGBTA inclusion efforts in the workplace through its Straight for Equality project by visiting www.straightforequality.org/workplace.